There’s always a little nip in the air after your life changes. You ever notice that? Like some kind of shift in your world actually rubs off on the rest of the world.
I don’t care what anybody tells you, having your own money is where it’s at. (God bless the child, honey!) You can talk about being all spiritual and living on little o’ nothing, but at the end of the day, you need money for damn near everything, except shit nobody wants. I took that to heart when I stepped up to the plate and took my swing.
After we signed a lot of papers and then basically shook hands, Mr. Hollywood Sr. drove away in a custom made convertible that came with a matching 20 yr old blond who was so beautiful, men, women, children, and even somebody’s dog watched in awe as she slid into the front seat. (I told you. Mr. H got it going on. And he’s way into his 60’s.)
Now, don’t hate. Hatin’ on Caramel for going for the millions makes no sense. People love to come out of the woodwork and call somebody a sellout, meanwhile, they’ll take the first thing somebody lays out in front of ‘em, just a grinnin’. So don’t even try to come for me with that junk, ok? Ole Mr. H Sr. had to go through about 9 different drafts and sweetin’ the pot a lot over the course of a few days before he could even think about shaking anything on me. And that’s something, let me tell you. It ain’t much, but it ain’t nothing. Even ole Mr. Hollywood Sr. had to tip his hat to me and…
…my trembling agent. (Land sakes, I ain’t seen such nervous chicken since around dinnertime on our farm in NC growing up!)
(Oh, shoosh, PETA! They know the deal. Besides, them reality shows are the same thing. Go mess with them. Oh they don’t get “killed” per se, or eaten, but that press machine they gotta go through afterwards looks a lot like my Grandaddy’s ax! )
Anyway, it was sealed, and almost immediately, I was feeling that nip in the air I was talking about.
Now, money or fame or any of that ain’t bad. The problem is when you underestimate the power of your “pull”. (Ew, some of ya’ll are so nasty!)
By your “pull”, I mean that damn near tractor beam action of a bad something or so and so. And I ain’t hintin’ at being addicted to money, heroine, Ben and Jerry’s or Italian shoes, sweets. I mean an undying connection to something that nothing can make you quit. It’s in your blood. There’s no rehab for this, and everybody’s got a “pull”. It’s kind of like your price tag, in a way. And before you make yourself look ridiculous, EVERYBODY HAS A PRICE! Some are real low and some are so high they may seem priceless, but it’s there, sugah, trust me, it’s there. And since your price is all up in and attached to your “pull”, it dictates just about everything you say or do.
Like when you run yourself in the ground from being there for any and everyone, but your own stuff is out of order, and it’s all because your daddy never paid you no mind. (i.e. “Poor Francine, she’s about to run herself in the ground for her man. It took her ending up laying in the hospital from exhaustion before Joe noticed. It don’t make no sense, she still with him.”
See, Joe is not Francine’s “pull”, his attention is. In fact Joe is the price she pays for her pull.
(Oh Chile honey, every woman needs a good male influence in her life. A good father makes a strong, confident woman, but a good for nothing son of a gun makes a Francine!)
CARAMEL CODE 101: Pull = Shit you’d just about kill somebody over to get and keep.
Whew! Feel like I’m preachin’ up in here today!
Anyway…
On my flight back to NYC, I flew first class. (See, Hollywood gets you started on that living high style drug right away.) Sitting a row up from me was a man who obviously had a very sensitive palette in regards to the different kinds of first class. Meaning, he was a ole F2 crab apple who missed his usual good service on his private jet or something. Afterwhile, I tuned him out. (His daddy must have been using the jet that day because if you really owned your own jet, wouldn’t you be flying in it right then instead of ruining my fabulous flight?!)
He had that flight attendant running for her life trying to please him so bad that she reminded me of that time I was in Miami Beach with a “friend” and got mistook for the missing daughter of this Cuban jazz singer. (Chile, you ain’t been through nothing until you been through some crazy bilingual detective trying to convince you that you somebody else, you just don’t remember it, ’cause you been brainwashed into believing you is you!! Huh? Lord, I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, poor Whitney Houston!)
Anyway see, I was hanging heavy big time with this handsome composer. He specialized in movie music and ran with a high end crowd. I was going to the hot parties and laying out nude on the beach. (Mmm hmm, during my Freebird years!) I didn’t have a lot of money, but had been so determined to go, I’d sold my old computer and spent the money to buy the plane ticket there and a very expensive bikini. (Instead of buying a new computer!) I pray I’m never that stupid again.
It was quite a week!
So one night, I was showin’ out on the dance floor, and this guy in a suit literally lifted me off the floor and pulled me outside. (Believe it not, it didn’t even faze me at first. Shoot, Caramel’s used to folks wantin’ to steal her away when they catch sight of her hips moving to some music! Puts them in a trance, chile!) Anyway, my “friend” was no where to be found. I’d gotten mad at him earlier, which is why I’d been showin’ out on the dance floor in the first place; to make him mad.
So here I am outside the club with this suit talking to me in Spanish, which I don’t understand all that well sober, let alone after two Grey Goose martinis, extra dirty, with three olives, ok? Add to that the tropical seductive breezes of Miami whipping all over the place, the fact that he still had me up off the ground, and my sudden assurance that he’d just growled the Spanish words for “sex slave” in my ear, and it was on. I was sure he’d slipped me one of those date rape drugs and was planning something. I started to swinging and beating him down so bad with my clutch purse, he screamed like a woman! (That’s right! Nobody, and I mean nobody gets to mess with Caramel’s flower against her consent, ok?!) Oh, it was a show, you hear me? Meanwhile, folks was just a watching and laughing. Not a soul stepped in. (What in the hell is wrong with people?!)
Seems this Cuban jazz singer’s daughter’s family was desperately looking for her, but Consuela (my name to protect her) wasn’t having it. She’d run away with her boyfriend, suspected of brainwashing her to get her money, several times, but they always caught up with her and brought her back. It was implied that she was a bit “special”, you know, retarded in the head too, and that, that was also a part of the reason she kept running away. (Uh, what?) I say, “If a 20 somethin’ somebody keeps skippin’ town on you, then maybe she don’t want to hang with ya’ll! Maybe she in love!”
Wrong thing to say.
With my drunken slurred speech and hoochie mama dress, that crazy detective assumed it was the brainwashing and retardation instead of the truth. (Shame, can’t you just say that about most anything nowadays?!) Oh, and it made him even more convinced he had the right girl!
Finally, my “friend” shows up and converses with him in Spanish. I held my breathe, hoping. It didn’t help. (Doggone it! If you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself!)
I mustered up my gumption, used my stage combat training, dug my heel into that crazy dick’s foot and ran like hell. He screamed loud. Again. (Don’t say it.) Then started after me. We woulda looked like an episode out of Miami Vice, but my “friend” got a clue, grabbed him before he could get going good and commenced to fightin’. He had that crazy detective pinned in seconds. (Musicians are scrappers, honey. Especially those jazz and classical boys. You’d be surprised. Once I saw a classically trained viola player, an opera singer, and a sax man, whose nickname was “Saxy Savon”, (MMmm), whup a bunch of wanna be thugs’ asses in alphabet city for calling them fags. Music men don’t fool around, jack!)
Anyway…
The trouble was, I didn’t know any of this was going on because I was half way down the road running like a wild animal (screaming “Fire!” ’cause someone told me to do that in the event of an emergency), and sure that this crazy fool was hot on my trail. By the time the cops caught up with me, I was back at my hotel, had made a rope with my sheets, and was planning a clean getaway as well as promising myself that the next time I decided to vacation in a foreign country, I’d learn the damn language first.
Speaking of traveling, back to my flight to NYC…
So, the man in front of me fell into a deep sleep after one drink, and that flight attendant was just a grinnin’ the rest of the trip way too much for me. I mentally added flight attendants to my list of folks you don’t mess with. Honey, I treat the people on my little list like royalty, ok? You on that list, you’ll not hear a single complaint outta Caramel, ’cause for one, she don’t want to be laid out still snoring like that ole F2 crab apple was while the rest of us were grabbing our bags and getting off the plane.
Back in NYC, I just couldn’t wait to get started. I’d even unpacked and sat down to work that day on my little script changes, I was that excited.
Then the problems started.
Right then that day, I had a time trying to write anything. Oh, a little this and that, but it wasn’t coming out like before. Since I’d had a long ride home, I didn’t think nothing of it. But after a few months of ok work and meetings with the so called “development” people where they got happier and happier, but I got smaller and smaller, I was fit to be tied. What was I to do? Seemed like the more they was calling for me to change, the worse the story got. And every time I’d try to get it back home, they’d throw something my way that just exasperated my “pull”. (Don’t bother scrolling up, I didn’t tell you what mine is and I ain’t never going to, so, poo!)
See, the real thing is this: Ole Hollywood is a desert full of folks who believe that if you was to see people like you on the screen, you’d realize just how wonderful you are, and wouldn’t be all full up with admiration, running behind them. They all invested in keepin’ you to thinkin’ that they’re the authority on what’s important and popular.
Why? Money. So they can keep raking in your money and fueling the idea that if your life don’t look like theirs, then it’s crap.
“Hollywood is a place where they’ll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul.” – Marilyn Monroe
I saw it first hand, ya’ll. You coulda knocked me over with a biscuit! You got a mess of ‘em who is hiding so many things, it’d make your head spin to know it. And they’s sad behind it to, but they can’t turn that dough a loose, so they get press folks that can make a pile of shit smell like lilacs in the dell, to distract you if you get close to knowing them for true. Oh there’s gay people running around pretending to be married and married people pretending to be happy and on and on… (Why, why, why, lord only knows!) It’s sad, to not be able to be yourself.
(And yes, for the record, Caramel Jones believes that ALL folks got the right to live life and love how they want. If one ain’t free, nary a one of us is!)
It’s a ball of confusion!
And I’ll confess it right here today! There’s a reason you don’t see many multi-colored cast movies, or women that look like the normal us. Or the hero looks like he does. Sure a few slip in, but even they get passed over for recognition, and sit waiting in the wings, trying to be satisfied with a “nomination” year after year.
It’s because folks like me (yes, even Caramel Jones) take the money and run. It’s so hard to turn down. You want to, but you can’t so well when you’re trying to keep the lights on and a roof over your head and all you’ve gotta do is just “tone” it down so they can sell it. Now, I ain’t asking for nobody’s pity and I shole ain’t buckin’ for a fight or some praise…
But in the middle of one of those “important” meetings where they were busy getting me to change something else they couldn’t “sell” (apple code for the brotha has to die in the movie so it’s more believable!), I was hit upside the head with the truth.
If I was powerless, then why are these turkey’s trying to shut me down. I mean, if I didn’t have no juice, then why hire me? (Mmm hmmm…that did it.)
Then I, Caramel Jones, poor as a church mouse, on the crest of possible greatness, made one of the most important calls of my life. I dialed the bat phone. (Mr. H’s private line):
Mr Hollywood Sr.: You’re the most interesting person I have ever met.
Me: Really?
Him: No. You can’t make a movie with no money, Caramel. And if you found someone to give you enough to do it, they’d never let you direct. Good luck.
He hung up.
There’s always a little nip in the air after your life changes. You ever notice that? Like some kind of shift in your world actually rubs off on the rest of the world.
So began my little battle to beat Mr. H Sr. and prove him and those like him wrong. See, everybody better watch out now, ’cause a few impossibilities that were once impossible, are no more. And that fact is giving out wings to believers!
Take heed haters:
A black man could be the next President of the United States. (Oh yeah!) I am fearlessly about to embark on directing my first film. (Oh double yeah!) And throughout history, come ups and downs and anything else, no one has ever been able to stop an idea whose time has come. (Oh h double hockey sticks yeah!!!)
Church say Amen… Amen.
Remember…
The Revolution will be Caramelized!
Peace, ya’ll.
